I’m no stranger to altering my costumes. Often after a first wearing there are fitting tweaks I want to make, but I’ve also retrimmed gowns, or completely remade them in the past, or even cut up old dresses to reuse the fabric for an entirely different project. However, with this project I tried something I’ve been thinking about for years. I updated an existing 18th century gown to reflect the new fashionable 1790s silhouette, copying specific alterations I’ve seen on extant gowns. In this case, I took my mid 1780s blue stripe gown which no longer fit, and altered it to a 1790-4 shape.